Review: Warhammer Online:AoR (PC)

My 30-day trial is over. I will not create an abo. It’s “War Over” for me at this point. I like the game yet there are issues that were driving me not to extend my account.

Disclaimer: The following article is the sole opinion of its author and does not represent MMORPG.com in its thoughts or opinions. This is not an official MMORPG.com editorial article.

The good things
Bright Wizard and Zealot was my pick. Both are great.
First I took BW to Level 10. Fun so far. Sometimes a little bit difficult because of the “glass canon” effect.
Battlegrounds were fun and I was able to do my job there quite good.
Then I changed to another server to try Chaos, a Zealot.
Oh man, Zealot was so much more fun to me then BW. I took it to Rank 15 with fame 11.
Battlegrounds were much more fun. Healing is sometimes not easy but doable.
Public Quests are a damn great invention. i loved to do those. I was always searching for the next one.
A masterpiece of an idea in my opinion.

The bad things
Battlegrounds (on both server I were) often take very long to open up.
The factions of Chaos and Order are heavily unbalanced in numbers.
Server population is by far too low – the players are scattered across too many servers (too many for release).
Battlegrounds sometimes confusing in the beginning. Sure, after some matches you get it but still.
It happens quite often that you can’t conclude Public Quests because of insufficient server population.
I miss music in this game. A real soundtrack. Something that adds to the environment and feeling.

A special note on Battlegrounds
Battlegrounds are often unbalanced. Example: Playing on Monday a couple of BGs: All fine, some wins, some lost.
Next Friday: I counted, 12 BGs: All lost! Seriously, there is no fun if you loose 12 random BGs in a row.
I don’t mind loosing to a strong group or because ours is maybe not so at it. But that was too much, definitely.
Further: I’m pissed off to loose just because the group doesn’t get it while im healing 43K+ and dishing out DoT DMG for 20K. Where is all the healing effort going? I’m often second in place for healing. Often I am alone too. Tell ya, sucks.

All of this lead to the decision not to continue the game. I’ll have a look at WAR again in 2-3 months to see if measures were taken or if population picked up good enough to jump again into it. If not, then so be it.

Final Score

7.4

Pros

Public quests Battlegrounds can be fun

Cons

Wizard is too much of a glass canon Battlegrounds can be annoying as hell Story is not drawing you in